Summer, Unofficial Day 75

Teddy Bear Park, Stillwater, Minnesota

Family Reunion, Part II

"The eating begins. Clams steam, corn steams, salad wilts, butter runs, hot dogs turn, torn chicken shines in the savage light. Iced tea, brewed in forty-quart milk cans, chuckles when sloshed. Paper plates buckle on broad laps. Plastic butter knives, asked to cut cold ham, refuse. Children underfoot in the pleased frenzy eat only potato chips. Somehow, as the first wave of appetite subsides, the long tables turn musical, and a murmur rises to the blank sky, a cackle rendered harmonious by a remote singleness of ancestor; a kind of fabric is woven and hung, a tapestry of the family fortunes, the threads of which include milkmen, ministers, mailmen, bankruptcy, death by war, death by automobile, insanity . . . The family has hovered in honorable obscurity, between poverty and wealth, between jail and high office. Real-estate dealers, schoolteachers, veterinarians are its noblemen; butchers, electricians, door-to-door salesmen its yeomen. Protestant and teetotalling, ironically virtous and mildly proud, it has added to America's statistics without altering their meaning. Whence, then, this strange joy?"

-- From "The Family Meadow," a short story by John Updike, published in The Early Stories: 1953-1975, copyright 2003, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

A Family Reunion

The ghost of U.S. Grant may year in and out summon the tourist horde to Galena, Ill., but we went there this weekend to celebrate family -- with a grand reunion of a 25/32nds representation of the clan, immediate and extended. The occasion was to celebrate Dave and Carm's golden wedding anniversary.

As Mark so eloquently pontificated in his toast to the celebrated couple, the family has increased and decreased -- in each way markedly -- over those 50 years. But the spirit of kin past and present filled the room, and it was much more tangible than just the commonality of lineage, genealogy or last name. Even as we extolled the virtue and marvel of being married 50 years, we watched the future spill out in front of us as the next generation filled the room with shouting and play. As the cousins -- the oldest one 13 -- flailed about in the motel pool or scurried off to the game rooms, it was clear they were already about making the memories that we were reminiscing about ourselves while sitting around the dinner table a few hours earlier. And so the beat goes on from one era to the next.

Still car shopping

Apparently we've been too busy car shopping for me to blog lately. After an exhaustive search of our domestic options, I think we're going to go the import route. I keep coming back to this little beauty I found in Prague.

photo by jason tetzloff 3.08

Summer, Unofficial Day 28

Take me out to the ballgame, at Carson Park, where I fell in love with the game 30+ years ago.

She (and they) worth the drive

It was a long trip back from central Illinois today, bypassing the flooded highways of southern Wisconsin. But the visit to granddaughter's (and daughter's and son-in-law's) was worth it.

Lake Delton's disappearance

Lake Delton disappeared last week.

Sounds like the beginning of a Robert Ludlum or Thomas Pynchon novel, doesn't it? Last week's news story seemed stranger than fiction. The storm-ravaged lake in the heart of Wisconsin's tourist country burst its earthen perimeter and within two hours disembogued 600 million gallons of water.

The official response poured forth as swiftly as the lake's discharge into the nearby Wisconsin River. We'll refill the lake, Gov. James Doyle reassured would-be visitors and propietors of the tourism industry, whose livelihood dried up faster than you can say Dells Visitor and Convention Bureau.

The lake is (was?) home to the famed Tommy Bartlett acrobatic water ski show, a portion of the charmingly anachronistic Duck boat tours, and several resorts that ringed the 267-acre lake. The Wisconsin Dells known and loved by tourists -- including its kitschy main street -- exists far beyond the lake's shores, so visitors still can find plenty of mini golf. But losing the lake in the middle of it all nonetheless drains some of the enthusiasm.

Everyone respects the economic impact of the swampy void that is Lake Delton, as well as the several other flood-related afflictions across the state last week. But while we're quick to express shock at the consequences, where's the wonder at the climactic and geological forces at work?

This story is about sediment and spillways as much as dollars and destinations. (Ironically, Lake Delton is a newly sensationational tourist temptation for onlookers curious about what a lake looks like underneath all that water.)

The Chicago Tribune reported the response of University of Wisconsin sedimentary geologist Shanan Peters to the lake's sudden purge. He said the result reminded him of a glacial lake draining, which is exactly what exposed the Dells millenniums ago, according to the Tribune. "A finger of water found its way through loose soil and the soft sandstone, and then a torrent followed it," the newspaper reported.

The Tribune continued: "Civil engineering experts and geologists blame prodigious downpours that in recent weeks soaked and softened the low point between Lake Delton and the river.
A spillway and dam couldn't keep pace with the lake's rising waters, which cut a yellow gash in the ancient, erosion-prone sandstone that ran straight to the river. And then the lake went down the drain.''

To me, that's the fascination of this cataclysm. Anyone who's ever traced a leak in their roof knows water goes where it wills itself to go. This is waterworks writ large, and a fascinating moment in Wisconsin's geology and geography, not just a scourge upon its economy.

Summer, Unofficial Day 6

Driving today along Wisconsin Highway 64.

A great way to start the summer

With the visit of family. This is mom, daughter and uncle.

But it's too bright to read at the beach

I remember summers past according to the books read during those salubrious months of repose. Roger Angell's The Summer Game was the year before sixth grade. Stephen King's On Writing was three decades later, the New York summer. The Grapes of Wrath filled one afternoon and the next morning in the June of '87. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables consumed parts of a couple of summers, during neither of which did I come close to finishing the 1,463-page Signet Classic paperpack edition. Not counting 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, which I just picked up at a Goodwill for $3, here are some others I've cracked open or will soon.